Our
laboratory is undertaking basic research on the development of vaccines
against the flavivirus diseases. This includes West Nile, Japanese
encephalitis, yellow fever and dengue. We undertake studies on the
excellent yellow fever 17D vaccine as a model to understand the
molecular basis of attenuation of this vaccine. This is of major
importance as the 17D vaccine virus is being used as an attenuated
backbone to generate chimeric vaccine viruses against other flavivirus
diseases, including dengue and Japanese encephalitis. In addition,
recombinant DNA technology and infectious clone technology/reverse
genetics are being used to identify molecular determinants of virulence
of yellow fever, West Nile, and Japanese encephalitis viruses, with the
aim of mutating these virulence determinants to develop candidate
attenuated vaccine strains. We also investigate the molecular
epidemiology of various flaviviruses (yellow fever, West Nile, Japanese
encephalitis, and St. Louis encephalitis viruses).
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